Monday, November 29, 1999

Lehman Europe unit administrators`` unveil plan for creditors

London, June 16 (PTI) The joint administrators of Lehman Brothers'' European business will aim to distribute cash worth 7.3 billion pounds from the collapsed entity to creditors as early as next year. Officials of global consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are the joint administrators for Lehman Brothers International, Europe (LBIE). Unveiling plans for creditors of LBIE today, the administrators said the proposal, if implemented, would materially shorten the time for distributing unsecured claims. "The consensual approach could enable the joint administrators to agree to the majority of the value of unsecured creditor claims by the year-end and pave the way for the first cash distribution in 2011," they said in a statement. "The joint administrators currently hold net cash of approximately 7.3 billion pounds," they added. LBIE''s parent US-based Lehman Brothers Holdings went bankrupt in September, 2008, pushing global markets into a tailspin and the collapse is seen as one of the benchmark moments in the 2008-09 financial crisis. The new proposal would involve LBIE determining the claim value of each financial trading creditor based on a comprehensive set of processes, data sources and valuation methods. According to the statement, the feasibility of the plan would depend on the willingness of the majority of financial trading counter-parties to support the process. "The consensual approach is an innovative mechanism which will enable the claims to be determined in an expeditious manner, resulting in significant time and cost savings to both unsecured creditors and LBIE," joint administrator Steven Pearson said.